Winning the hard way!

We reached the half way point in the season last Saturday against Old Minchendenians, formerly known as Cockfosters IVs or V's and our perennial promotion rivals from years past. With showers forecast, the team which won the toss was always going to bowl, and the skipper chose poorly. The opposition bowling was accurate and helped by movement off the damp pitch and lee Crocker (0) was bowled by opposition skipper James Ward in the 4th over (6/1). Zaf Basit (7) joined him shortly after to leave us on 15/2. Runs were hard to get and Andrew Teague and Pete Jaffe produced the longest partnership of the match, scoring 34 off the next 14 overs until Andrew (18) was trapped LBW in the first over of change bowler Shahid Khan (49/3). Darshan Raval and Pete continued the slow progress, taking the score to 68 when Pete (26) was also adjudged LBW from Khan's bowling (68/4). James Samarasinghe, making his 2nd team debut, looked comfortable but became Khan's third LBW victim for 4 in the 35th over (75/5). Anand Kumar, the hero of the Cockfosters 3's game at this ground, felt pressured by the slow scoring rate and hit a ball straight up in the air from the splendidly named and scorers nightmare spinner Chandrasekhar Walajapet Sureshbabu to be caught for 2 (84/6). Sanket Shah was then bowled for 4 by the returning James Ward, shortly followed by Dave Flavell (0), who managed to edge a ball from Ward to keeper, and Ali Javed, again bowled by Ward (96/9). Darshan had been slowly accumulating runs at the other end and finally fell for a high score of 27, becoming Wards 6th victim, 5 of whom were bowled, to end the innings on 106.

Tea was delayed due to the late but well received delivery of fresh hot bhajias and samosas and the mood was sombre. O.M's openers Ben Rose and Ramesh Varsani set about chasing the meagre total in absolutely no hurry, though helped by a couple of 4 balls from Darshan '3 samosas' Raval's second over. Progress was slow against the generally accurate lines of Ali Javed and Darshan Raval, and the score crawled to 20 until Varsani (9) hit a thick leading edge from Darshan to cover where James took a comfortable catch. Number 3 bat Pavan Patel (0) didn't last long, mishitting a ball to mid off where it was greatfully pouched by Dave Flavell, and Rose (7) slashed wildly and snicked one to Zaf to make the score 20/3 from 13 overs. Shahid Khan was watchful for a while until he skied a ball to second slip where Ali called loud and took the catch (28/4). The O.M.s keeper Paul McIvor was looking to play aggressively and took a liking to Sanket Shah's first over until he played across one and spooned a return catch to Sanket (37/5), followed immediately by Vas Packianathan who swiped a ball straight to the skilfully placed Pete Jaffe at deep cow (37/6) to put us back in the box seat. Taylan Uysal and C.W.S. then produced a rare period of stability to the innings, putting on 20 until Uysal went back to a turning ball from Anand Kumar and was bowled off his pads for 17 (57/7). A second double figure partnership followed with Tim Brocklehurst (10) belting the skipper through deep midwicket twice before falling to a high catch by Pete Jaffe off the returning Ali Javed (74/8). O.M.'s skipper Ward (8) then bashed the ball around a bit before becoming Anand's second victim (86/9) and the innings was wrapped up with CWS (15) skying to mid off to give us an unlikely victory.

Batting was difficult on a wicket that gave the bowlers a good deal of assistance. Andrew Teague (18), Pete Jaffe (26) and Darshan Raval (27) produced innings that had some of the more impatient team members tearing their hair out, but that won us the match thus proving the importance of not getting out in challenging circumstances yet again. Interestingly, 9 of our wickets and 6 of theirs fell at one end, and importantly no catches were dropped in an excellent fielding and bowling effort.

The win put us back to the top of the table, with Northchurch (295/5 and 12 points) batting Redbourn (145/2 and 1 point) to a certain draw which helped neither of them but aided us greatly. A the halfway point of the season we are top of the Division by 7 points, having had 40 points taken out of us by Redbourn playing and winning twice when our games have been rained off. Hope we get some decent weather....

Old Minchendenians 10 points, Mill Hill Village 2's 30 points

Next up Kings Langley 3's away